GaN Technology for E, W and G-Band Applications

• Published in: 2014 IEEE Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuit Symposium (CSICS) pp. 1 - 4
• Main Authors: Margomenos, A., Kurdoghlian, A., Micovic, M., Shinohara, K., Brown, D. F., Corrion, A. L., Moyer, H. P., Burnham, S., Regan, D. C., Grabar, R. M., McGuire, C., Wetzel, M. D., Bowen, R., Chen, P. S., Tai, H. Y., Schmitz, A., Fung, H., Fung, A., Chow, D. H.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.10.2014
• Subjects: Gallium nitride; HEMTs; Linearity; MMICs; Performance evaluation; Power amplifiers; Power generation
• DOI: 10.1109/CSICS.2014.6978559
• ISSN: 1550-8781

Highly scaled GaN T-gate technology offers devices with high f t /f MAX , and low minimum noise figure while still maintaining high breakdown voltage and high linearity typical for GaN technology. In this paper we report an E-band GaN power amplifier (PA) with output power (P out ) of 1.3 W at power added efficiency (PAE) of 27% and a 65-110 GHz ultra-wideband low noise amplifier (LNA). We also report the first G-band GaN amplifier capable of producing output power density of 296mW/mm at 180 GHz. All these components were realized with a 40 nm T-gate process (f t = 200 GHz, f MAX = 400 GHz, V brk > 40V) which can enable the next generation of transmitter and receiver components that meet or exceed performance reported by competing device technologies while maintaining > 5x higher breakdown voltage, higher linearity, dynamic range and RF survivability.